The Pepper Spray Store’s top complaint from customers has nothing to do with the store or its product.

Its negative feedback is almost exclusively about parking, owner Nelson Lauver says.

The store is part of Bethlehem’s Main Street Commons complex at Main and Broad streets in the city. A parking deck is behind the building. The deck has two centralized parking payment machines instead of individual meters, which several commons merchants say has reduced business.

The authority’s survey found that shoppers like the centralized machines but several merchants conducted their own survey that found the opposite, Lauver said.

The electronic machines are especially disliked by senior citizens, who merchants like catering to because of their higher-than-average disposable incomes, Lauver said.

“We have to make it simple for shoppers,” he said. “We live and die by this parking deck.”

The majority of Main Street Commons merchants dislike the centralized parking kiosks and would prefer to go back to individual meters, Lauver said. One store there gets so many complaints about the machines that it printed fliers for customers with the parking authority’s phone number and email address to submit grievances.

Bone Appetit Bakery also gets numerous complaints about the parking machines, owner Jim Hruban said. He said he doesn’t trust the results of the parking authority’s survey on the machines because the majority of his customers don’t like them.

“It’s like a wolf watching a hen house when they do their own survey,” Hruban said. “The parking authority should be helping the merchants — instead they’re a hindrance.”

The parking authority surveyed more than 100 shoppers and found only 12 percent of them found the parking machines difficult, authority Executive Assistant Kim Berger said. Berger also attends weekly Downtown Bethlehem Association meetings and said she hasn’t heard many complaints about the machines.

“I can see where first-time users might think it’s confusing,” she said. “I kind of compare it to an ATM, the first time you come up to it, you’re like, ‘What do I do?’ Now you go up to an ATM, you hardly have to look at the numbers.”

The parking authority has added large signs explaining how the machines work and plan to print postcard-size instructions for shoppers to carry with them, Berger said.

The authority’s records also show that about two-thirds of the machines’ users pay with credit cards or dollar bills, options that wouldn’t be available to them with traditional meters, Berger said.

“You only have 30 percent using coins — they would miss the option to use for dollars or credit cards,” she said.

Lauver suggested that a change machine be installed on the deck along with the meters.

Bethlehem Brew Works — the Commons’ anchor tenant — doesn’t hear too many complaints about the parking machines, according to its marketing director, Traci Langer. She said that may be because the restaurant’s clientele are generally between the ages of 21 and 50. She said she has helped some senior citizens who were having difficulties with the parking machine.